Respond to these rapid questions in our The Boogeyman quiz and we will tell you which The Boogeyman character you are. Play it now.
Rob Savage has demonstrated twice that he is capable of setting greater goals than “The Boogeyman,” an emotionally draining horror film and illogical attempt to make PG-13 horror terrifying. Previous projects by the director, including “Host,” about a haunted Zoom séance, and “Dashcam,” about a rapping anti-vaxxer’s live-streamed slide into hell, both exhibited creativity and provocation. They have aided in the advancement of terror and are as up to date as a WiFi signal. “The Boogeyman” is full of recognizable beats and lacks personality, making it a strong candidate to be this June’s Horror Movie of the Month. It is the horror equivalent of a budding musician releasing a fan-friendly Christmas album as their biggest project to yet.
It’s hardly the best source, to be fair. The mythical creature was stretched into a broad personification of terror and anxiety when “The Boogeyman” short story originated from “The Mind of Stephen King,” as the movie’s poster boasts. It was delivered in a two-person discussion and finished with a corny twist. Now that loss has been incorporated into this adaptation by “A Quiet Place” authors Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, and Mark Heyman, the impact of the door-bursting, child-terrifying night monster is even more profound.
With the suffocating self-seriousness of recent “elevated horror” debates intact, Savage has put together a wonky seance for PG-13 horror films from more than ten years ago. The film drags a therapist father, played by Chris Messina’s Dr. Will Harper, and his two daughters, Sadie (Sophie Thatcher), and the younger Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair), through the darkness while also being soft around the edges due to its reliance on peek-a-boo jump scares. The mother of the family died in a vehicle accident a year ago.
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The bleak ambience of the residence and the lustrous blacks and browns used by production designer Jeremy Woodward and cinematographer Eli Born to make gloom seem to permeate even the daytime give us a sense of the anguish. However, “The Boogeyman” lacks the emotional finesse to evoke such profound grief in us; all we feel is sympathy for the sisters (Thatcher, who gives a superb genre performance, keeps us from losing interest completely). Instead, we are forced to endure a somber tone that numbs us and makes the movie feel longer than it actually is, in between some passable flashbang sections where the ladies are tormented at night by something we only see for fleeting minutes.
The Boogeyman Quiz
Lester (from the short story), who is portrayed here by David Dastmalchian at his most cryptic and also as a type of character development shorthand, is the Boogeyman that enters the Harpers’ hollowed-out and extra creaky home. He sneaks away and hangs himself in the dead mother’s art closet after telling a horrifying tale about the murder of his children and a powerful monster, thus introducing the monster into their house.
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Like the passing of Will’s wife and the mother of the children, Lester’s suicide is just another death in the Harper universe, and he doesn’t really want to talk about it. Sadie and Sawyer are in the dark in figurative and real senses. Sadie, a shy loner who goes to school wearing one of her mother’s skirts, has food smashed all over it by a bully; Sawyer sleeps with a huge light ball because she is such a coward. The only thing they both want is some inner calm, which is constantly disturbed by violent bumps in the night and abruptly opening or closing closet doors.
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Savage probably won the assignment to helm “The Boogeyman” because of his prior use of negative space and points-of-view, such as the shadows behind someone on a candle-lit Zoom call or the hazy image of a figure waiting for the camera’s focus to adjust. This film’s formulaic approach to scares, which heavily relies on sound mixing, false alarms, and children in danger, only offers brief thrills like this. It creates a sporadically unsettling—but not particularly frightening—atmosphere in the first half of the movie. Its cleverest aspect is the sparing use of light and sound, as when Sawyer throws her large light ball into the darkness further down the corridor in the hopes that she is mistaken about what is on the other side.
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Savage’s understanding of technology is oddly ignored throughout this contemporary novel. The narrative mostly ignores the usefulness that a cell phone flashlight could have in thwarting the beast or prompting more inventive scripting, despite all the emphasis about how the Boogeyman hates light. Such an absence becomes obvious as time goes on and the dread of the creature has little effect on us. In Stephen King-speak, a clown in the distance would be far scarier than a big spider up close if Pennywise from “It” were to appear. “The Boogeyman” by Savage is an outmoded pest control story that need modernization.
on June 2nd, available in theaters.
